Felicidades a todos los padres

Palabras de un padre a su hijo

Si...

Si guardas en tu puesto la cabeza tranquila
cuando todo a tu lado es causa  perdida;
si tienes en tí mismo una fe que otros  te niegan
y no desprecias nunca las dudas que ellos tengan;
si esperas en tu puesto, sin fatiga en la espera;
si engañado, no engañas;
si no buscas mas odio que el odio que te tengan…

Si eres bueno y no finges ser mejor de lo que eres;
si al hablar no exageras lo que sabes y quieres.
Si sueñas y los sueños no te hacen esclavo;
si piensas y rechazas lo que piensas en vano.

Si tropiezas al triunfo; si llega tu derrota
y a los dos impostores los tratas de igual forma.
Si logras que se sepa la verdad que has hablado
a pesar del sofisma del orbe encanallado.
Si vuelves al comienzo de la obra perdida,
aunque esta obra sea la de toda tu vida.

Si arriesgas en un golpe y lleno de alegría
tus ganancias de siempre a la suerte de un día
y pierdes y te lanzas de nuevo a la pelea
sin decir a nadie de lo que es y lo que era.

Si logras que tus nervios y el corazón te asistan
aun después de su fuga de tu cuerpo en fatiga
y se agarren contigo cuando no queda nada;
porque tú lo deseas y lo quieres y mandas.

Si hablas con el pueblo y guardas tu virtud.
Si marchas junto a reyes con tu paso y tu luz.
Si alguien  que te hiera llega a hacerte una herida,
Si todos te reclaman y ni uno te precisa,

Si llenas el minuto inolvidable y cierto
de sesenta segundos que te lleven al cielo…
todo lo de esta tierra será de tu dominio
y mucho más aún: serás HOMBRE, hijo mío. 

...

Poema Original

                                    If—

If you can keep your head when all about you
   Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
   But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
   Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
   And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
   If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
   And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
   Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
   And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
   And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
   And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
   To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
   Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
   Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
   If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—
   Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling

Sobre el autor

Rudyard Kipling

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born December 30, 1865, in Bombay, India, to a British family. When he was five years old, he was taken to England to begin his education, where he suffered deep feelings of abandonment and confusion after living a pampered lifestyle as a colonial. He returned to India at the age of seventeen to work as a journalist and editor for the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore. Kipling published his first collection of verse, Departmental Ditties and Other Verses, in 1886 and his first collection of stories, Plain Tales from the Hills, in 1888.
In the early 1890s some of his poems were published in William Ernest Henley’s National Observer and later collected in to Barrack-Room Ballads (1892), an immensely popular collection which contained “Gunga Din” and “Mandalay.” In 1892 Kipling married and moved to Vermont, where he published the two Jungle Books and began work on Kim. He returned to England with his family in 1896 and published another novel, Captains Courageous. Kipling visited South Africa during the Boer War, editing a newspaper there and writing the Just-So Stories. Kim, Kipling’s most successful novel (and his last), appeared in 1901. The Kipling family moved to Sussex permanently in 1902, and he devoted the rest of his life to writing poetry and short stories, including his most famous poem, "If—". He died on January 18, 1936; his ashes are buried in Westminster Abbey.

 Tomado de

http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/rudyard-kipling